Coding Birds
by TwinEnigma
Summary: Of all the words Tim wants to hear, "Damian has gone out" crown his do not want list. Not that he's fond of the latest addition to the family, but Damian's his responsibility and Batman has already lost two sons too many. He's not going to lose another one, not if Tim can help it. AU, non Nu52 compliant.
1. Chapter 1: Player 1 Has Entered the Game

_**Coding Birds  
**_

_by TwinEnigma_

_**Disclaimer:**__ I do not own Batman, Tron, Tron: Legacy or related characters, et cetera. I do this for fun and not profit._

**Warnings:** _AU in certain respects; Assume Pre-Nu52  
_

* * *

_**Chapter 1:** Player 1 Has Entered The Game_

"Master Damian has gone _out_."

The statement is prim, formal, and does little to hide the edge of exasperation in Alfred's voice as he continues to hold a cold pack to what is shaping up to be a nice shiner.

Of all the words Tim Drake wants to hear from Alfred right now, those words are about the absolute crowning glory on his _do not want_ list.

"Are you okay?" he ventures.

Alfred shoots him a withering look, one that positively screams of how thin his patience has worn. "I will endure. Right now, our priority is retrieving the young master before Master Bruce returns."

"Yeah, _right_," Tim says, almost forcing the word out to help _remind_ himself of his promise to Bruce because, in all honesty, he doesn't think of that brat as a priority at all. His friends, his family, his city – those are priorities, not the brat who just waltzed in here and declared himself lord of the manor.

In fact, if he's being perfectly honest with himself, there's an ugly part of himself that's _glad_ Damian's run off. The kid has been an _absolute_ nightmarish shit to everyone since he got here. Never in his entire life has Tim found another human being more utterly aggravating.

Still, he _knows_ Alfred's right: they have to find Damian and _fast_, before he gets himself into trouble. Gotham's a bad place for kids in their business and worse for those who associate with the Bat. And, as much as he hates the brat for mouthing off about it in the way he does, Tim knows Damian's proud to be Batman's son and he gets that, he does. But owning up to that _out there_, on the street? There are a lot of scumbags out there that wouldn't stop at hurting a kid to stick it to Batman, a fact reinforced by the memorial cases of both his predecessors. Tim's already put Bruce back together once; he's not sure he can accomplish the same miracle twice.

"The cameras," Tim murmurs as he stands, more for Alfred's benefit than his own; still, treating it like the first step in a normal investigation rather than a search for his bratty new stepbrother helps him to focus a little better. "He can't have been gone that long."

"It's not a matter of how long he's been gone," Alfred states as he joins him at the terminal. Everything he hasn't said hangs over them with an ominous finality and Tim can't help the way his insides twist with dread.

Damian's a twisted, violent little brat, but he's still a _kid._

Tim accesses the cameras, spooling back the footage until he sees the diminutive figure begin to speed backwards across the feed. He doesn't stop until he finds the point the boy entered the cave frame for the first time.

_21:43:13 _– Entry.

_21:55:10_ – Exits on spare motorcycle.

Tim rewinds, starts the tape again. There's got to be a hint about where Damian was headed somewhere in here.

"Activating homing device," Alfred says from next to him and the screen splits, the tracking program automatically narrowing grid by grid, eliminating possibilities.

Tim doesn't need to look to know it's going to be a dead end – Damian's League trained and, worse, intelligent. If he were Damian, a tracking device would be the first thing he'd look for and disable. Instead, he zooms in on the boy, following his progression through the cave. There's a certain pragmatism to his movements, one that Tim can appreciate, and if he can just figure out what end Damian was working towards, he knows he'll be able to find him.

Alfred mutters a curse, turning towards the cave and Tim doesn't need to be a detective to guess where the bike tracker ended up.

_21:52:44_ – Takes Jason's old armor and utility belt.

"Try Jason's old belt tracker," he supplies, pausing and rewinding the footage. He tries not to think about the flash of pain that crosses the old man's face at the words.

Damian strides across the screen again.

_21:44:25_ – Damian gains access to the computer.

_21:49:59_ – Damian leaves the computer and makes his way to the cases.

"What were you looking for?" Tim asks, rewinding and zooming in. "You were looking for something."

"Not found," Alfred announces grimly. His fingers continue to move across the keyboard and out of the corner of his eye, Tim is suddenly seeing an end of the tracking program he's never seen before, one that sends a subconscious shiver down his spine.

It's a log, obviously from a passive constantly-active subroutine, because Jason's belt tracker hasn't been physically used in years and, as far as Tim had known, the trackers had to be activated remotely from here to work. But this log proved that clearly wasn't the case – Batman had tabs on the equipment even if the primary tracker had been disabled or deactivated. It's clever – clever and more than a little creepy, if he thinks about it. His own equipment could be recording his every movement and he can think of a dozen ways a system like that could become a _threat_.

Unless… of course: unless _Alfred_ was the only one with access.

Tim blinks and refocuses on tracking Damian's movements in the computer, deciding to tackle that dragon later. This, at least, is more his element. He follows the brat's footprints through the mapping software and case files, pausing as it strikes him.

"Of course," he says, slapping a hand to his forehead. "I should have known!"

Alfred looks at him, questioningly.

"Damian wants to prove himself to his father – he's practically been shouting it from the roof since he got here," Tim explains, standing as he types faster, diving into the access logs for Damian's room. Now that he knows what to look for, it's crystal clear. "What's the one thing he thinks will make him proud if it isn't beating the shit out of criminals?"

Tim's eyes never leave the screen. "It's Dick. He's gone looking for Dick."

"We were never able to find him," Alfred says quietly. "There was _nothing._"

"Well," Tim grinds out and hates himself for even admitting it, "Damian obviously found _something_."

* * *

_AN:_

_Tim doesn't refer to Bruce as his father here for reasons which largely comprise of his father is "dad" and Bruce is like a father to him, but not quite "dad" if you get my drift... so basically feels._

_And the big question is... what happened to Dick? OH MY GOSH YOU WILL HAVE TO READ, I AM SUCH A MEANIE._


	2. Chapter 2: Puzzle Mode

_**Coding Birds  
**_

_by TwinEnigma_

_**Disclaimer:**__ I do not own Batman, Tron, Tron: Legacy or related characters, et cetera. I do this for fun and not profit._

**Warnings:** _AU in certain respects; Assume Pre-Nu52  
_

* * *

_**Chapter 2:** Puzzle Mode  
_

Tim shifts gears with almost subconscious ease as he lets out the throttle and streaks down the highway towards Dick's old apartment. Headlights and taillights blur into trailing streamers of light at this speed and it conjures images of an old arcade game he played as a little kid, one whose name he can't quite recall. There's an organized surrealism to the sight of the city at night that he never really pays attention to unless he's on the bike like this.

He forgets sometimes that Gotham can be so beautiful.

Tim downshifts, turning off the highway and follows the curve of the off-ramp into a part of the city he hasn't been to in years. His HUD flashes the route to Dick's old safehouse in a steady yellow-orange overlay of his line of sight. Dick's codes grant him access and, with a pang, he realizes they've never been changed out of sheer _hope_.

Another, cleverer part of himself realizes that Batman would undoubtedly have programmed the computer to alert him directly if the codes were ever used even before the voice cuts across the room's coms.

"Nightwing, report?" Batman's voice is a low growl from the speakers. It betrays nothing of what he must be feeling.

"Sorry about that, boss," Tim answers, reflexively wincing. He knows this is going to hurt, but it can't be helped. "It's Robin."

"What the hell are you doing over there?" he demands.

"Checking on a lead in the area," Tim states. It's a mathematician's answer.

"You shouldn't be there," Batman growls over the com. The anger that whips across the words is real. "Finish up and get out."

"Roger that," Tim replies and cuts off his coms completely, switching over to his portable computer. Alfred will probably kill him for that, too, but if that alert notified Batman, then there's no way that it hadn't gone off in the cave too. Alfred would understand – he _had_ to.

Tim frowns, examining the room. So, if that was the case, then how had Damian gotten by the system without triggering it?

He stares at the dust, his footprints lonely in their wake, and then looks up. Dick had, according to Alfred, enjoyed entering by way of window. Damian didn't know the codes, so he would likely use the path of least resistance – a window, probably one that had wear from constantly being used as an entrance.

It made sense. If Damian was looking for Dick, he'd be trying to think like Dick and Dick would absolutely have gone in the window to his apartment, instead of the door.

Tim grits his teeth and feels both incredibly stupid and totally wretched for forgetting that was the way Dick thought. He knows it's been years, but he hadn't realized until now how much he's forgotten and it _hurts_.

Dick was the one who got him into this, after all, and he owes him more than that.

He closes his eyes, shakes it off and files the feeling away to deal with later, because there's a mission to deal with first and he doesn't have the time for guilt or anger. The mission comes first, _always._

Tim wheels his bike outside, stashes it behind a dumpster, re-secures the door, and turns his attention skywards. Right, the _window._ He scales the building, carefully casing the windows until he finds the one he's looking for. Examining it, he quickly finds the hidden catch, pops it, and watches as the window opens with a satisfying click.

The apartment inside is dark and terribly quiet. Damian's footprints are small and ghostly in the dust. He follows them slowly, observing both their path and the apartment around him. He pauses at the door to the kitchen and frowns. Damian's footprints in this room double back and head towards the window. There's also a void in the dust. Something has been moved or removed.

Tim turns to his computer, calling up the case file for Dick's disappearance and goes straight to the photos for the kitchen. At first, there appears to be no difference from the photos on file and the room he's standing in. He frowns, moving closer to the fridge, and calls up detail shots.

A book on the counter has been moved and there's what looks like a postcard on the fridge in the photo that's no longer there. Dick's files on the case he was working are also absent, but those were removed long ago to hide Dick's identity as Nightwing from the cops. No, whatever Damian found useful had to have still been physically _here_.

Tim pulls the book over for a better look. It's a somewhat dusty copy of the last book published by Kevin Flynn, the ENCOM computer genius who had disappeared in '89. He was supposed to be one of those one-of-a-kind geniuses that came along only once in a lifetime, a virtual god of hacking, and there was something of an ongoing conspiracy theory about his disappearance. Every now and again, it'd come up and always with the rallying cry of _Flynn Lives._ White and black hats alike told stories that if you knew where to look and looked hard enough, you'd find _proof_ – a number, a pager, secret documents, or something like that.

It's an odd book for Dick to have – he doesn't remember Dick being that interested in computers. Tim, though, was all over that sort of thing and he remembers this book. He'd read it as a kid, thought it was fascinating, and he vaguely remembers being disappointed to learn that Flynn had disappeared and no more would be forthcoming. Beyond that, he's disappointed to realize he's forgotten so much of it.

According to the case file photos, the book was sitting on top of the files for the case Dick was working on. The police photos showed it in the same spot, sans case files. Tim places it back in its original spot and fiddles with it until it looks like the one in the picture. He then turns to the fridge and zooms in on the fridge photos as best he can, until he can see the missing postcard. It's a postcard of an old building with a rounded front and a large neon sign dominating the roof; the sign boldly names the place as _Flynn's Arcade_.

Tim frowns, narrowing his eyes beneath his mask, and turns back to the book, flipping through it until he hits the back jacket. In the black and white photo, Kevin Flynn smiles back at him. The postcard is there as well, as if it had been shut inside the book. He picks it up, turns it over, and notes the words _Flynn Lives!_ written in Dick's handwriting.

Tim closes his eyes, visualizes the scene, and then orders himself to stop. Damian was trying to get in Dick's head. What had Damian seen that they'd overlooked? It had to be something that Dick was interested in.

_What was Dick thinking?_

He lets out a deep breath and opens his eyes.

The postcard is the first thing in his hand. He flips it over, first looking at the photo of the arcade and then at the words written on the back. He paces back and forth, tapping the postcard against his other hand, and then glances at the book. He imagines the case files underneath it, as it originally was.

The book is on top of the case files. There is a reason for this. Is it part of a case? Was Dick looking into Kevin Flynn's disappearance? If he was, it'd have been a cold case by the time Dick looked at it – a so-called mystery for the ages.

A personal challenge then, Tim concludes. There hasn't been a mystery a member of the Bat's family hasn't been able to solve.

Spinning the book around, he thumbs through it, skimming the contents. He then opens it to the back flap and idly reads the biography there.

Kevin Flynn's photo smiles at him.

Tim frowns and looks at the postcard.

He re-reads the biography.

"Son of a –" Tim starts, breaking off into a frustrated growl as it hits him like a freight train. He leaves the book and starts out the window with the postcard still in hand, quickly flipping the coms back on.

Alfred's voice immediately greets him: "Robin? Thank god, where are you?"

"I'm at Nightwing's nest. What's the last position on R2's transmitter?" he asks once his feet are back on solid ground. He pulls out his bike and gets on, flipping the postcard back over.

"Downtown, old Bludhaven," Alfred answers quickly. "Last ping came from a historical landmark building. It's an arcade - closed since 1989."

"Flynn's Arcade?" Tim ventures.

"Yes, how did you know?" Alfred asks.

"Call it a hunch," Tim sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. "I'll get back to you."

* * *

_AN:_

_Damn it, Dick.  
_

_This is also the chapter where Tim discovers the hardest part of dealing with grief is the horror that comes with realizing you're starting to forget the little details._


	3. Chapter 3: The Game-Changer

_**Coding Birds  
**_

_by TwinEnigma_

_**Disclaimer:**__ I do not own Batman, Tron, Tron: Legacy or related characters, et cetera. I do this for fun and not profit._

**Warnings:** _AU in certain respects; Assume Pre-Nu52  
_

* * *

_**Chapter 3:** The Game-Changer  
_

The difference between the picture on the postcard and the real thing is jarring. Time certainly hasn't been kind to this part of the city. And yet, the arcade sits, quiet and foreboding, hunkered down amid brickwork buildings that have clearly seen better days like a squatting giant. In front of it, sloppily hidden by a greasy tarp, is the missing motorcycle from the cave.

Tim checks the schematics on his computer and frowns. It's not a big building at all – at least, not according to public record, anyway. If it really was as the schematics made it out to be, then it shouldn't be a difficult search. But in his gut, he finds himself wondering why hadn't they found Kevin Flynn all those years ago and decides there's got to be more going on here than meets the eye.

Kevin Flynn certainly had the funds and the connections to tweak out a facility like this without anyone being the wiser. It wouldn't be beyond the realm of possibility to suppose he had some kind of lab hidden here. Hell, Gotham's full of secret labs and experimental facilities and, if he's reading his computer right, this place would certainly qualify. It's still pulling power from the grid, surging twice within the last three hours.

Tim doesn't like it.

He pulls his bike up to Damian's and carefully checks the tank – it's cool to the touch. Damian's been here a while, then. Not wasting any more time, Tim conceals both their bikes and makes his way to the roof. It's laughably easy to follow Damian's path into the building from there and he drops silently into the building with the grace of practice.

All around him, arcade games are dark and silent beneath billowing plastic sheets. The air is stale and stagnant, smelling heavily of dust. Switching on his flashlight, he scans the room and finds nothing, save for footprints in the dust.

His blood instantly chills.

Damian's footprints are tiny and sure, confidently striding deeper into the building.

The second set of footprints that follow his are large, an _adult's_, and they are measured, cautious steps, clearly following the smaller set but in a way that indicated their owner had a reason to suspect something amiss. A quick glance confirms that these footsteps start where Tim is standing.

"Shit," Tim hisses, clicking off his flashlight and switching to nightvision. He moves off the direct path, skirting between the machines, and carefully makes his way deeper inside. There's a part of him that hopes it's a night guard, but the logical part of him is screaming that no night guard would use Damian's rope to enter the arcade and he knows it.

Both sets of footprints abruptly disappear at the back wall.

Tim frowns again, cautiously stepping forward and examining the floor. There's definitely a shallow groove here and the dust has been disturbed near it. He turns his attention to the wall and feels along the edge where the groove meets the wall until he finds another shallow channel. It runs up and around, over the top of an old _TRON_ arcade game. It is the only game uncovered.

"A shell," he murmurs, absently, "Of course."

He rummages around in his utility belt until he finds a quarter and slides it into the game slot. There's a click and a secret door opens, revealing a passageway. The lights flicker on, filling the air with the scent of heating dust.

Tim deactivates his nightvision, discreetly draws his collapsible baton and flicks it to ready position; the corridor is too tight for his staff and he'd rather not get caught off guard. He proceeds slowly, counting the steps down into the belly of the building, until he at last comes to a door.

Damian's footprints disappear through the doorway. The second set of footprints do something unusual at the door and, miming the position, Tim realizes that their owner had actually been clearing the room beyond. It was certainly disconcerting, to say the least.

He tries the doorknob, finds it unlocked, and cautiously prods the door open with his baton.

The room is jarringly, disappointingly and horribly empty.

It shouldn't be.

Tim frowns, crouching down, and stares balefully at the footprints. He follows them with his eyes into the room, towards the giant, gently humming machine on the right side of the room. He can't see any other footprints in the thick dust. There's no evidence of a scuffle or violence of any kind. In fact, there's nothing to suggest that anything is amiss at all.

Tim doesn't like this, not one bit. Something in his gut is screaming that there is something seriously wrong here, that it's a trap and he's just sitting on the edge of it like an idiot, instead of getting out of there like a sane person.

If it's a trap, then there has to be a mechanism of some sort.

Tim chews on his lip thoughtfully and pulls out a Robin shuriken. "For science," he mutters and lobs it into the room, right about the height of a child's head.

There's a terrible mechanical click and long whirring whine that comes from the left side of the room and the next thing he knows, Tim watches his shuriken get pulled apart by a beam of light from what he can only describe as a ray gun on steroids.

The computer on the other side of the room chirps, blinking. The zoom on his lenses picks up the dust-blurred words _digitization complete_.

Tim stares in horror and abject fascination, his eyes flicking between the screen and the ray gun directly opposite it.

"Oh."

That actually explains a lot. Anyone trying to access the terminal must have tripped the digitizing ray gun and, without anyone able to get close to the terminal without being digitized, the digitizing program was just sitting there running.

"Shit," he says, dropping into a sitting position.

He's just solved two of the highest profile disappearances of the last twenty years and his hands are effectively tied because Kevin Flynn had the poor sense to aim his stupid digitizing gun at the terminal that controlled it like a complete idiot.

Tim fights down a hysterical laugh, desperately trying to school his face. "No, I can do this. I _can do this._ I just have to figure out how to get around the stupid _ray gun_."

Robin's no stranger to ray guns.

Yeah, he can _totally_ do this.

* * *

_AN:_

_The chapter in which Tim does not fail his perception check, unlike everyone else who enters the room._


	4. Chapter 4: Bits

_**Coding Birds  
**_

_by TwinEnigma_

_**Disclaimer:**__ I do not own Batman, Tron, Tron: Legacy or related characters, et cetera. I do this for fun and not profit._

**Warnings:** _AU in certain respects; Assume Pre-Nu52  
_

* * *

_**Chapter 4:** Bits  
_

It takes about a dozen more shuriken before Tim's able to determine the rough area that the digitizer ray covers. He ends up having to inch along the door side wall, pressing himself as flat against it as humanly possible until he gets behind the ray to the workstation. There are tons of schematics and technical drawings of the equipment, dusty parts and tools, and they're surprisingly unhelpful: he's intelligent, yes, but he doesn't have near the background in theoretical physics to even begin to understand the work Flynn had been up to on this. This stuff is on a whole separate wavelength.

The basic principles, however, are rather clear. The _ray gun_, as he'd termed it, translates matter into computer code and back again. It being on is absolutely critical if he intends to retrieve anything or any_one_ it has translated into code, and the terminal is the only means of controlling it. There is absolutely no remote, nothing.

If he's lucky, Tim can make his way along the wall to the computer terminal, manually patch in, and attempt to reroute control through his computer. The thing is that the technology in here is practically freaking _ancient._ He'd have to jury rig a compatible connection before he could even attempt to patch in and then he has no idea what kind of security Flynn's got on that beast.

Tim grimaces, turning to the worktable.

He's just wasting time worrying about it.

Tim grabs anything he thinks will be useful, stuffs it in his belt, and begins the slow crawl back along the wall towards the computer terminal. Every step he takes is measured and he dares not move too far off the wall, even once he finally gets to the terminal. Letting himself slide down the wall until he disappears behind the edge of the bulky terminal, he finally lets himself really breathe and immediately gets to work.

The panel comes off and he's staring into the beating heart of a machine that's both ancient and unlike anything he's ever seen before. There's a complexity to the innards of this thing that is boggling for a device that probably didn't even have a fraction of the processing power of his cell phone. Hell, the GUI he'd gotten a glance at earlier was little better than a DOS command prompt window.

Frowning, Tim grounds himself and sets about creating a way to bridge the gap between his machine and the ancient beast, using only ancient SCSIs and the tools in his belt. It's like pulling teeth, honestly, and this is just the hardware connection: once he's got a hardline in, he's still got to get into the software and figure out how to get everyone back in one piece. That is, provided that he can get past whatever security permissions Flynn had set up on this thing and find them on the drive.

Tim gives the computer a nasty smile. "I'm going to have to introduce you to my little buddy."

He feels more than a little mad, sitting here, talking to the computer like this, but it's been a long night and he's working against the clock with absolutely the wrong tools for a job that's supposed to be all finesse. Instead, he feels like he's going at this like a buffoonish caricature of a surgeon with a hacksaw. Coding's always been more his thing anyway. Is it any wonder he's actually looking forward to the _hard part_?

In theory, the procedure is fairly simple: he links in with his computer, finds the backdoor into Flynn's system and turns his computer into a temporary remote terminal from which he can safely control the digitizing ray. In reality, it's a bit harder than that.

Fortunately, he's brought something that'll speed the process along: his own little bit of coded magic. It's a little program he'd written up after he'd started as Robin and it's his personal key to pulling data out of some of the hardest systems in Gotham. It's simple and, given the simple architecture he's seen in this system so far, it's probably not going to take that long to find what he's looking for once he gets in. Everything else it throws at him, he can handle.

"Do your worst, Kevin Flynn," he growls, slipping the last SCSI into place.

The firewall recognizes his machine almost instantly.

"Ha!" Tim shouts, practically pouncing on the keyboard. Now this was more like it!

He slips easily and seamlessly into the familiar dance of keystrokes and commands, plowing through the old monster's defenses like they are tissue paper. It's throwing all kinds of crap at him, but he's persistent and his program is running like a dream. Then, he's in and he can't help but marvel at the processes going on in this beast. It's been running like this for _years_ and he's got no idea what it's been doing, but the fact that it's kept right on plodding along is astonishing.

Half the code for the digitizer is so complex that Tim won't even dare touch it for fear of the harm he could do. The other half, the specific command controls, are beautifully simplistic and elegant in design and he can't help but be grateful he hadn't been caught up in that beam, not with the way this had been coded. It had been made effectively impossible to activate the digitizer from inside the machine without a specific key coded to...

"You goddamn genius, Kevin Flynn," Tim breathes and means every word. He narrows his eyes at the keyboard. "Now, where are my friends?"

He plunges deeper into the code with his search program, looking for anything that jumps out at him as familiar, and when it happens, he almost dismisses it as another firewall.

_This is Nightwing. I heard you're looking for me?_

"Yes, yes, _yes!_" Tim practically shouts, unable to contain his delight. "Thank you!"

_Get us out of here!_

His fingers fly over the keyboard, accessing the digitizer command tree, and pulls up the three files his search program had located. He triggers them one by one, praying that he'd understood the safety protocols correctly and that they wouldn't appear on top of each other or _worse_.

The digitizer whirs, powering up, and for a moment the room is filled with blinding light as the power surges. Then the light dies and Tim is left blinking and half blinded at the three figures standing in the center of the room.

Damian is easy to recognize – he's easily the shortest – but it's the man nearest the console that Tim's gaze is drawn to. Tim remembers that face. It's been years, but he _remembers_.

"You must be Tim," Dick says, smiling. "It's good to finally meet you."

* * *

_AN:_

_Tim's smart, hell yes, but that machine, man...  
_


End file.
